A encyclopedia is a book of which the goal is to reflect in a way as exhaustive as possible the unit of the Connaissance or a specific branch of knowledge. One distinguishes it from the Dictionnaire which seeks to define the whole of the words of a given language, whereas an encyclopedia seeks to describe all knowledge, that they are indicated by a single word, an expression, even an imported word of a foreign language.

Etymology

The term encyclopedia comes from encyclopædia , Latinization of the Renaissance (16th century) of the Greek expression of Plutarque enkuklios paideia (εγκύκλιος παιδεία), literally “the circle of knowledge” (enkuklios: circular or total and paideia: education), which indicated a Instruction supplements, covering all known sciences, and was faultily retranscribed enkuklopaideia during the Moyen-âge.

Some historical encyclopedias

If the concept of encyclopedia appears truly only at the XVIIe century in Europe, several works, as of Antiquity, make an effort " to gather the whole of knowledge humaines" , and this, throughout the Middle Ages.

The encyclopedia of Vincent of Beauvais (13th century)

Vincent of Beauvais wrote an encyclopedia, the Speculum Majus , great compilation of the knowledge of the Moyen-âge. It integrated in particular geographical knowledge such as one knew them in the middle of the 13th century, starting from the authors Greek, Latin, Arab and Hebraic.

The Speculum Majus consists of three parts, abundantly republished until the Renaissance,

  • the Speculum Naturale (or Mirror of the Natural ) is divided into 32 pounds and 718 chapters. It is the summary of the Connaissance S of natural history of its time, a mosaic of quotations of authors Latin, Greek, Arab and even Hebraic whose Vincent gives the sources.

  • the Speculum Doctrinal (or Mirror of the Doctrines) consists of 17 pounds and 374 chapters. It is about a kind of handbook for the students which treats varied things: mechanical arts, Scholastic, tactical soldier, etc It thus does not limit to the natural history but milked also Logique, of Rhétorique, Poésie, Géométrie, of Astronomie, education or passions human, a Anatomie, a Chirurgie and a Médecine, Droit.

  • the Speculum Historiale (or Mirror of the History) is composed of 31 pounds and 3793 chapters, where the author makes the account of the historical events since Creation until the years 1250. Is there also an inventory biographical of various poets.

Al-Muqaddima de Ibn Khaldoun (14th century)

The Muqaddima, or Al-Muqaddima ( Introduction to the universal history ), are a work of Ibn Khaldoun written in 1377 and in encyclopedic matter which includes the whole of knowledge of the 14th century starting from the Greek, Byzantine and Moslem written sources.

It approaches the geography, philosophy, the history, economics, sociology, politics, town planning, medicine and even sustainable development.

Its principle of gathering, in only one document, several scientific disciplines was used as model with the encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert, which also took again part of its articulation. Although incomplete and less extended, Al-Muqaddima can be regarded as the ancestor of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert.

The Encyclopedia of Diderot and Alembert

the Encyclopedia or reasoned Dictionary of sciences, arts and the trades in 35 volumes (17 volumes of texts, 11 of boards, 4 of supplement, 2 of index and 1 supplement of board) of format Folio, was written between 1751 and 1772 on the initiative of Denis Diderot and Jean d' Alembert, Philosophe S of the Century of the lights, on an idea of Diderot which took as a starting point the concept of an English dictionary that the bookseller the Breton one had asked him to translate.

To conclude this “operation of bookstore”, the Breton one had to join three other booksellers: Briasson, David and Laurent Durand.

Diderot, while rewriting several passages according to its own thought, brings together 178 collaborators, among whom great minds of the time, in order to embrace the whole of the field of the knowledge. This work made live approximately 1.000 workmen during 25 years, it is to say its scale. Among the crowd of authors, one can underline the presence of:

Jules Michelet dira : “the Encyclopedia was much more than one book. It was a faction… whole Europe was put at it. ” It made it possible all the men to have access to knowledge, by revisiting the whole of the field of the knowledge by a meticulous inventory and reorganizing the known one around properly human values. She affirmed herself indeed as of the preamble very whole centered on a philosophy sensualist and either starting from a Christian mystic, like were the first compilations of the Middle Ages.

In addition, it is important to announce that the Encyclopedia sign the appearance of the Social sciences. It is as - and it is on this aspect as our history, and our comprehension of the 18th century like revolutionary century, insists especially - about a polemical weapon which called into question of many things of the 18th century. Without entering in detail, the Encyclopedia questions God, the report/ratio of the man in the world, it gives out of balance the idea of a falls of the garden of Eden and a decline of the man, to affirm the need for making a sum practices and ordered knowledge which always goes accumulating. the critical Encyclopedia more particularly the social system of the time (company of Old Mode), institutions, inequalities between the men, the royal Authority of divine right, the absolute Monarchy. It also enters, if one considers the ambition of the text (to know universal for the whole of the men) and his pulling, in competition with the Bible.

For the authors of the Encyclopedia , the thought was then seen like a freedom. The reference to a narrower term was often a tool to make pass a personal Pensée of the author by creating a bond between the passages of a Discours.

The impression and the diffusion of the first two volumes the Encyclopedia prohibited in 1752 then condemned and was completely prohibited by the pope Clément XIII in 1759. There were many reprintings and even pirate editions. All confused editions, the work was sold with 25  000 specimens between 1751 and 1782. Catherine II of Russia proposed besides in Diderot to publish the Encyclopedia from a point of view of political profits.

Various formats

Encyclopedias on paper

There exists on the market about thirty encyclopedias on paper. The number of pages can enormously vary, as well as the presentation of the knowledge: thus, if the majority of the encyclopedias propose articles anonymously presented, Universalis , for example, request with its writers to sign their articles - what does not make a Universalis a better encyclopedia; it is simply a question of showing here one of the problems of the encyclopedia: that of the sources.

One traditionally distinguishes the alphabetical encyclopedias from the encyclopedias " thématiques" or " méthodiques" as for their mode of classification (classification by matter or field, like the Encyclopdie Frenchwoman of L. Febvre and Anatole de Monzie, or the Quillet encyclopedias).

There in addition exist specialized encyclopedias.

Among the encyclopedias general practitioners out of paper, one finds in particular:

Among the specialized encyclopedias, one finds:

  • the '' encyclopedic Dictionary of medical sciences '' (the reader will find other volumes of this encyclopedia in thirty-six volumes on the same site);
  • the '' encyclopedic and biographical Dictionary of industry and the industrial arts '' in eight volumes (even notices);
  • the Encyclopedia of the Trades of the Workers' association of the Companions of the Duty whose collection includes/understands seven works to date:
    • body,
    • the frame and timber construction,
    • the art of the roofer,
    • canopies,
    • plaster works, staff and stucco,
    • masonry and stone size,
    • joinery;
  • the Berber Encyclopedia.

Encyclopedias on CD-ROM

Encyclopedias on the Web

  • See Encyclopedias on Internet

Quotations

“the goal of an encyclopedia is to gather scattered knowledge on the surface of the ground, to expose the general system to the men with whom we live, and to transmit them of it to the men who will come after us. ” Denis Diderot (Extracted the Encyclopedia )

“We felt, with the English author, that the first step which we had to take towards the reasoned and well heard execution of an Encyclopedia, it was to form a family tree of all sciences and all arts, which marked the origin of each branch of our knowledge, the connections that they have between them and with the common stem, and which was used to us to recall the various articles to their chiefs. It was not an easy thing. It was a question of containing on a page the groundwork of a work which can be carried out only in several folio volumes, and which must contain one day all knowledge of the men. ” Denis Diderot (Extracted the Leaflet relative to the Encyclopedia , 1750)

“These is our faculties that we deduced our knowledge; the history came to us from the memory; philosophy, of the reason; and poetry, of imagination: distribution fertilizes to which theology even lends itself; because in this science the facts are history, and refer to the memory, without very excluding of them prophecies, which are only one species of history where the account preceded the event: the mysteries, the dogmas and the precepts are of eternal philosophy and divine reason; and the parabolas, left allegorical poetry, are of imagination inspired. At once we saw our knowledge rising from/to each other; the history was distributed as an ecclesiastic, civil, natural, literary, etc philosophy, in science of God, of the man, nature, etc poetry, in narration, dramatic, allegorical, etc From there, theology, natural history, physics, metaphysics, mathematics, etc; meteorology, hydrology, etc; mechanics, astronomy, optics, etc; in a word, an innumerable multitude of branches and branches, whose science of the axioms or proposals obvious by themselves must be looked at, in the synthetic order, like the joint base. ” Denis Diderot (Extracted the Leaflet relative to the Encyclopedia , 1750)

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